Slavoj Žižek speaks at the the International Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 12 October 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/HAYOUNG JEON

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has condemned the seizure of books, including one of his own, from Russian bookshops in comments he gave to Novaya Gazeta Europe on Thursday.

The Russian edition of Žižek’s Jokes.

“Nothing new, no surprise. In the USA, school and public libraries are for years throwing out books they consider dangerous, literature and theory. The difference is that in the US it is done not by the state but by local communities — parents’ unions, school boards — which is for me even more horrible,” he told Novaya Europe.

Žižek was most surprised that it was his book Žižek’s Jokes that made it onto the blacklist. “The only thing that surprises me is — why my book of jokes? It is an innocent book, with no political edge,” Žižek said.

Žižek’s Jokes, which was published in Russian by the Ripol Classic publishing house in 2019, was among the books featured in letters received by Russian bookstores earlier this week demanding they remove 37 titles from their shelves to avoid “adverse consequences”, according to BBC News Russian.

The “dangerous books” also included works by American author Jeffrey Eugenides, who wrote the popular novel The Virgin Suicides, exiled Russian writer Viktor Yerofeyev, who penned the Encyclopaedia of the Russian Soul, and Japanese writer Ryū Murakami.

The crackdown on books and bookshops began last month, when police seized dozens of books with LGBT and feminist themes from the Podpisnye Izdaniya bookstore in St. Petersburg, while earlier in May, police in Moscow detained a number of publishing professionals, including a director at Russia’s largest publishing house Eksmo, in connection to a criminal case relating to books allegedly containing “LGBT propaganda”.